


HSWC 2013 Bonus Round Three: collected fills

by chthonianCrocuta (lovesthesoundof)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, F/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesthesoundof/pseuds/chthonianCrocuta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rest of my fills for Bonus Round Three.  Warnings are listed in each chapter heading.</p><p><i>Where Were You When The Buzzing Stopped? [Rose<>Terezi, G]</i><br/>She knows what's happening before you do.</p><p><i>Boy Meets Fox Cub [Dave<3Terezi, E]</i><br/>She's not just a beggar.  You're not just a Spartan.  Between you, you're not just anyone.</p><p><i>The K Word [Condesce<3<Redglare, T]</i><br/>You haven't been there for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where Were You When The Buzzing Stopped?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by pyrokineticvampire of Team Dirk<>Roxy:
> 
> _Rose <>Terezi_  
>  _Northeast blackout of 1965._
> 
> No warnings apply.

The moment it happens, Terezi cocks her head. "Oh," she says, curious. She's always curious, it seems to you. "The lights are out."

"How..." It takes a moment to dawn on you. "...oh, you can hear - ?"

"Naturally!" She beams at you with all her teeth. There are too many of them. "Each appliance has its own distinct drone. Something has stopped your symphony of domesticity dead in its tracks."

Before she said that, you thought it might just be the lights. You leave your chair and make for the kitchen. "No need to check," she calls after you. "It's all out. All of it."

The moment you step through the doorway, you can tell she's right. The usual quiet-house sound is gone, leaving only eerie silence. Everything is dark. When you open the fridge, the light stays out.

"I told you."

She's standing in the doorway. You push the fridge door shut and check the seal. Ideally, you need to keep it shut until the power comes back. "I know. I don't know why I felt the need to see it."

"Don't you?" You can hear that she's smiling, but you turn to see it anyway. "People tend to rely on sight as their main source of factual information and proof. You believe it when you see it!"

"I suppose we do." She's left herself out of that estimation, of course. "And what do you believe, Terezi?"

She takes two steps in your general direction; your hands come up reflexively to stop her. You think you might be more concerned about her bumping into things than she is. She wrinkles her nose a little with a grin. "Many things," she says, and turns her head again, listening. "Is it just us?"

"Good question."

One look outside answers it. The moon is high and bright, but the windows are all dark, and the streetlamps are empty shells.

"I can't hear the lamps," says Terezi beside you. "They buzz like trapped insects, but not tonight. Not now. Is anything on at all?" You shake your head. "That sounded like no."

"Mm, not that I can see. Whatever happened, it appears to have cut power to the whole city."

Terezi licks her lips. You haven't known her long, but you've noticed she does that when she's considering her options. "Hmm. Cooking by candlelight, then."

"So it would seem."

She turns to you slowly. "And reading, too? Is that what you plan to do?"

You hadn't thought about it. "It strikes me as excessively Gothic, but needs must. Did you have a better idea?"

"Actually...yes."

Years later, when people ask you where you were when The Lights Went Out, you'll tell them you were sitting at home with a blind woman, and she knew the power was out before you did. You'll tell them about filling the kitchen with white pillar candles and cooking by their flickering light, surrounded by sweet smoke and the smell of burning wax.

But you won't tell them how she bound your eyes with a scarf and stayed beside you, one hand on your shoulder, as you learned to walk, sit, stand, eat, all without seeing - nor that you still remember the timbre of her voice, low and steady, as she said _you know more than you think you do, if you'll just stop looking for it_.


	2. Boy Meets Fox Cub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by sunflowerwonder of Team Alpha!Dave<3Dirk:
> 
> _Dave <3Terezi_   
> _Athens, Greece. 510 B.C. (The Establishment of Democracy)_
> 
> Warnings: sexual content, dubious consent, body horror (description of missing eyes, description of damaged teeth), institutional oppression of women. I may have overestimated the rating, but given the warnings I'm erring on the side of caution.

"Hey, Spartan boy."

As soon as the words reach your ear, you're on edge. It's no surprise to be hailed by your heritage, but heading back to what passes for home at sunset is not a time you expect to be called to in the first place. Whoever it is must have followed you. You knew you should've changed your route again.

All that takes place in the first instant of thought. In the second instant, you tell yourself, _slow down; that's a woman's voice_.

After a fashion, you're right.

If she can call you "boy", which until you're thirty she can, you can definitely call her "girl". She's your age, you think, or younger, tiny and spindly, folded up cross-legged in the lee of a building with a stick across her knees. At first you think she's just a beggar, but something makes you look again and -

Oh. She has no eyes. There's a telling looseness to the lids; they sag inward where they ought to curve.

But if she can't see you, how does she know who you are?

Curiosity demands you approach, but curiosity can go fuck itself. You lean against a nearby wall and watch her instead. She called to you; she'll come to you. Sure enough, in a moment she's unfolding, rising, sweeping the stick out in front of her to find her way. With each step forward, she sweeps it again, _skrrt-skrrt_ across the ground, and only when she's close enough that she's whacked you in the shin does she stop. Now that you see her up close she's impressively ugly: pointed, wide-mouthed, neither hips nor breasts nor buttocks to speak of, a starving waif in rags meant for someone twice her size. Her hair has been cut at the neck, and her teeth are gappy and crooked; you're pretty sure there are several missing, but the rest have spread themselves out equally in a parody of proper dentition. One or two of them look too sharp to be human. The fact that she's grinning at you doesn't help at all.

"They say that if a fox cub gnawed through your guts you wouldn't say a word," she says, the playful tone at odds with her rough-edged voice. "Is it true?"

...You think you might know this girl. Or know of her, anyway. Athenians _talk_ , from sun-up to sun-down, and then they just break out the torches and carry right on into the night. It doesn't take a wine-loosened tongue to talk about strange things in Athens, and Stick Girl counts as strange. You've heard people mention a little blind beggar who speaks in riddles, a kind of poor man's prophet. Apparently she'll read your fortune for an apple, trade one of the city's little secrets for a loaf of bread. For a handful of olives, she'll tell you if your lover's been in someone else's bed. For two handfuls, she'll tell you whose.

But you don't have a lover, nor a handful of olives, and you don't want to know what the gods have in store for you. She called out to you, not the other way around, and besides an answer to her question - which is just referencing a stereotype based on overblown pro-Spartan propaganda, and therefore beneath your notice - you don't know what she wants from you. If she bothered to learn who you are, not to mention follow your habits sufficiently well to stop you in the street (and all, somehow, without eyes), it has to be more than just that.

She shifts her weight, moving closer to you. You think she's watching you, as much as a blind girl can. The dents of her empty eye sockets unnerve you. They say that since she lost her sight, Athene's been whispering in her ear. You want to ask her if that's true, though you doubt she'd tell you if it were - but now her twiglike fingers are sliding under your chlamys, nails curling against your belly, and despite her ugliness you feel a warm rush of response under your skin. She chuckles; the sound rattles in her throat. How could she know? She can't see you, and you doubt Athene cares about one poor Spartan, too sex-starved by dint of aloofness to keep himself from reacting to a woman's touch. Her wrist pushes the chlamys aside; she takes a deep breath as she sinks to her knees, her palm pushing you back against the wall. You feel like she's breathing you in. It's aggressive for a woman, especially for an Athenian, but you don't think she wants to harm you and she's small enough that you feel secure. With her hand splayed against your hip, you notice she has very fine bones, like a bird's.

She kisses your belly, warm and dry. She's less ugly when she's not trying to smile. Then she sticks her tongue in your navel and laughs at your involuntary gasp - it didn't hurt, but the warm, wet push of it was startling - and her teeth graze over your abdomen, which shouldn't turn you on but it does, and she's speaking, murmuring against your skin:

"As I suspected! Just a story after all."

And then she dips her head lower, and ω Ζευ και αλλοι θεοι [1] you have never had anyone do _that_ before, not even with their hand, never mind their tongue, and she's chuckling again and the tremor of it starts up in you, like Echo's voice calling back amidst the hills, and if you'd ever been inclined to push her away those thoughts are dead and gone. They can burn in Tartarus for all you care.

All too soon she withdraws. You get a hand into her hair - softer than it looked - and try to push her back, but she shushes you and strokes you with her hand as she rises, so you let her. Light as a child she climbs you, as you might climb an apple tree, and settles in your instinctive hold as though she belongs there.

"I'll be your fox cub, Spartan boy," she says, tugging your chlamys around herself. "Let's see if I can make you speak."

She smells like earth and charred wood and salt, like Aetnaean Hephaistos' workshop when some god has called for a sword, and as you sink into the heat of her she lets out a low hiss, steam from water touched by the new-forged blade.

When the last glow of sunset has faded you've taken her home, which was no doubt exactly what she wanted. She's lying beside you, tracing unintelligible patterns on your chest with her fingertips.

"Why are you still here?" she says at length, and you're about to point out that it's _you_ who lives here when she clarifies, "In Athens. You escaped my city's retribution at the Acropolis. Your countrymen fled. Why did you stay?"

It's strange how she keeps calling it _her city_ , as if she owns it personally, but you let that go for now. For a moment you can't decide what to tell her; you have plenty of reasons to be here, but you don't know which ones you want to talk about the least. You try telling her the food's better, which she agrees with but quickly brushes off, and then you start a ramble about the weather, but that doesn't work either. She's persistent. It's like she has a sixth sense for bullshit - or maybe just smells it, now that you think of it. You'd throw her out and tell her nothing if she weren't the only woman who's ever looked twice at you (ha ha), but she is, and that matters more than you'll ever tell _anyone_ , least of all her. So eventually you tell her about your father, and your father's father, and your brother who is the spitting image of them both, and how you were the second son, and when she smiles knowingly you don't know if you're horrified that she understands or glad you don't have to explain it.

"Ahh," she says. "The long, dark shadow of a heroic brother who would rather you returned on your shield than without it. No wonder you're so pale, living all your life in his shade. Are you really as white as goat's milk, or does my city exaggerate?"

That's the other thing that makes you different, and you still don't know how she knows about it. Do people talk to her about you? You wouldn't care, but you don't remember giving them reason to. Maybe she really _does_ get hints from Athene.

"Those who don't speak to me still speak near me," she says airily when you ask about her sources. She says nothing, you note, of Athene. "I hear very well, you know. Lately I hear that the golden-haired Spartan has been seen in every theatre in the city at least twice, listening to poets." She grins again, and you still wish she wouldn't do it but it doesn't bother you quite so much any more. "Are you a poet, Spartan boy?"

You are. You're not. You wish you were. You don't know. None of these are what you say to her. What you say is a rhyme, one you're just making up as you speak, about a blind girl who trades apples for slices of the future, secrets for slices of bread, and how only people with eyes know you're like milk and corn, and how you want to know what word, what god, told her you were worth tasting.

It seems to please her, but she doesn't tell you the answer. "Beautiful things are happening in my city," she tells you instead. "Hippias and Isagoras are banished. Cleisthenes' reforms have made equality the law. δημοκρατία! [2] The people have power." Her smile grows wry; ugly as it is, her mouth is expressive. "Provided, of course, that the people are Athenian men. The only way for a boy like you to have a man's voice is to sway the Athenians to speak for him. In my city, a poet can have more power than a general." If she had eyes, they'd be gleaming. "What do you say to that?"

What do you say? You say what anyone with sense would say in your situation: you say, if the boy from Sparta ends up at the reins, what's in it for the blind girl who knows too much? And what does he get for driving her chariot?

The way she smiles then is not a grin. It's a concession. She's not a subtle manipulator, and if she didn't know it before she does now. You watch her sit up and walk to the window; you sit and wait while she breathes the night air. She is nymph-like in the glow of the moon and stars, fragile and ethereal, not of the world of men and not meant for man to own.

"I've been with this city through all her hardships," she says. Since last she spoke, her voice seems to have aged twenty years. "Now that her days of celebration have finally come, I won't be a beggar at the feast. Athene sent you to me, Spartan boy, you with your poetry. A Spartan looks at a woman and sees more than a mother to be. He sees a governor. While the men fight their wars, Sparta is run by women. You know I can steer my city's course, true as any charioteer - or as any helmsman, we Athenians would say. And for you..." She's coming back to you now, backlit by moonlight, a thin shadow of a girl, a spirit of smoke and ashes. "...why, nothing compares to a poet's glory. Men flock to hear him. Women, too."

You like the sound of that. Despite yourself, you like the expression of her face as she says it.

Her hands come to rest on your cheeks, and her forehead to rest on yours. Of their own accord, your arms come around her.

"He is like Apollo, they will say," she whispers against your mouth. "Like Apollo, crowned with the radiant sun...speaking words of fire."

She tastes like steel, like blood, like you, and she fits in your arms like the gods carved her for it, and you are young enough, lonely enough, to mistake that for love.

By the time you look back and recognise your mistake, it doesn't matter. Everything is easier years down the line, when you have your little house that the two of you built and there's less pretence between you. You still think she's ugly, but you've grown accustomed to her particular brand of ugliness. She's familiar, and if you write poems about how that's more important than beauty they never see the light of day.

The place grows with time, gains livestock. The young trees grow older and bear fruit. You find a stray pup as scrawny as she is, take it home and tell her it's white. She touches it once and says "he's black". He is. As coal. The roughness of his coat told her so. She gives him a monstrous name - Μέλανοποταμός [3] - and you can't quite believe it, but the little bastard grows into it. He stands guard over your croft like Kerberos at the gates of the Underworld.

You like to think your brother would be proud.

Times change. Policies change. People make war, make peace, make mistakes. Your name moves from mouth to ear, resounds through the city like the beat of a heart. She was right about the Apollo thing, as it turns out. People like you for your strange looks, and even those who don't can forget that you're Spartan for long enough to enjoy your biting verse. If the words are more hers than yours sometimes, you don't enjoy the accolades any less.

You can only play at respectability, but that suits you just fine. You like playing at the things that don't matter. She plays pretty well at the things that do - caring for the pigs and the goat and the dog, tending the grove with the olives and your precious apple trees, deciding whom to support and whom to condemn. All you have to do is rhyme, and occasionally mend the roof.

You're a Spartan exile and she's a backstreets oracle, and between you you're one of the most influential men in Athens.

You're not sure if εἰρωνεία [4] is really the word you want, but for now - and perhaps forever - it'll do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] "o Zeu kai alloi theoi", oh Zeus and the other gods  
> [2] "demokratia", a participant government that was the precursor to modern representative democracy  
> [3] "Melanopotamos", literally (I hope) "black river" or "black stream"; another word for a stream is a "beck"...  
> [4] "eironeia", deception through concealment of the truth, or feigned ignorance - this is the root of the English word "irony"


	3. The K Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by testiclueless of Team Equius<3Gamzee:
> 
> _Condesce <3<Redglare_   
> _Watergate Scandal; Washington DC; 1972._
> 
> Warnings: non con (mind control/alien possession, pervasive), implied sexual content

" _Y͐͌ͅo̦͒̎̆͆̓ṵ̦̓͆͊ ̳͚̠͙̤̼s͖̘͙̙̦͓̾͐̉ͪ͐h̪̄̄̅õ̭̱̦̅̏ͅuͯ̀ͬ̐̌ͪḷ̯̈̿d̥̪͇̐̆ͭͯ'̟̼v̈́̄e̝̲͍͔̙ͨ̓̒ͮͮ ̺͉̋̑̋p͇̼͎ͯ̏͌̂̇a̲ͩ̎̇͊r̉̒ͥ̒d̩͉̳̩̑̈̾ͫo͈̰̯̒̃n̳̟͎̣͈͆͗̊ė̺͉ͣ͂d̙̣ ̬͓͚̖͚̠͉̄͊t̬̏h̗̙̹̻̳̍̈͐̋͛ͨe͓̭̓̽ͪ ̠̊̈̆̅͗ṁ̻a̯͗ͮ̉̇ͫs̙̹̣̦͖͍̬̚t̫̅͑̌̐̈́͛͊ͅe̦̰͎͚̰͋ͯ̆̋ŕ͔ͯ̂m̬̹͈̣̣̊̉̽ͪͥͧ̊ͅì̹̩̠̲̅ͭͫn͂͌͌ͬ͌d̰̹̹̥͖̫͔͑̓.͇̣͉̮̤̳̖ͣ̓͌ͫ̂͐_ "

The words go in at his ears, but his brain can only parse them as garbled English. You, lurking in the depths of his subconscious mind, know them for what they are.

Alternian.

As he turns to look at his secretary, you see a flash of rich orange in the woman's sclerae and wonder, with a twist of black in your heart (he will feel an inexplicable pull of hatred and lust he doesn't understand), how many mammalian meatbags your adversary had to jump between to get here - and when she learned to make their inferior vocal cords form the language of conquerors.

It's late. No one is due to come in. You _push_ him to see that he's not disturbed, which isn't difficult; the strength of your dark attraction is more than enough to convince him he wants the woman, and you chose him because he'll do anything to get what he wants. Once it's done, you watch the woman snap her fingers and feel the _surge_ of another creature's power, warping the door latches and tricking the cameras into a loop.

Then she closes her eyes and topples gently into a chair, and sighs out one long breath of black smoke, glittering with embers of teal.

You drop the President of the United States in a heap on the floor and coil out smokeshaped through his nose. By the time you've reformed, your adversary - you want to use the K word, but she won't let you yet - is standing in front of you.

"Got a lotta nerve showin' up when my buoy's on the clock," you note, looking her up and down. "You glub too many words ta him, his thinkpan gon' run out through his auricular sponges."

She smiles mirthlessly, flashing her teeth. You've missed those teeth. "And what a waste of a twisted thinkpan that would be. How many years have you spent priming him again? Twenty-five?"

"Glubber fuck, it bin that long since Ros-swell?" You form a threatening grin of your own; her teeth are good, but you're convinced yours are betta. "Must'a clean lost tack'a time."

"Perhaps you left it in the same place as your senses," she snaps, stalking away. Her boot heels clack convincingly on the floor tiles; cod, she _is_ getting good at manifishtation, all without your ebba being there to sea it. Fuck. "If you'd just _push_ ed your precious President to pardon his little mastermind, he wouldn't have come running to my men all keen to turn state's evidence."

She's talking about John Dean. "You givin' him immunity?"

"No! Christ, no. He's a weasel and a disgrace to the Bar; I don't care if he does make the damn case, I want him in jail as soon as he's finished." She turns to look at you over her shoulder. "You've gone too far, Condessa. Your host will be useless when this scandal comes out, and we both know you're not keeping him for his skin. You'll never get one this powerful again."

"Who glubbin' says so?" You scowl, manifesting your trident in your hand. "Maybe I'll grab the next guy, make him pardon this wastechute - " You prod Nixon with a toe. " - just to piss you off."

She sneers. "Oh you would. But what if you keep him? What if you sit here in your big white house and play god to men all day, beyond reproach, beyond questioning? Have you any idea how long it took me to get _close_ to impeaching you? You might as well be on another planet!"

She throws up her hands and turns away again, and as much as you love making her lose her shit the display leaves a sour taste in your mouth. She's right. It's been too long. She played so many bit parts for you over the years, and now she's finally doing something she loves - not that you glub a fuck about justice, but whatebber floats her boat - and you're not there being a proper nemesis. You haven't been fair to her.

No wonder she won't give you the K word.

"Play this out," you say, leaning on your trident. "Your toys an' mine. If he cracks, I go. If not, I'mma wait out the second tern first."

Her head snaps around; her eyes flash with anger. "That's ridiculous. You can't expect me to - "

" _That's what's on the glubbin' table_ , beach; hake it or leave it." But you can't bear the look of uncertainty in her eyes, so you throw her a little more bait. "Tell ya what. You fork this asshole inta resignin'? I'mma catch me a searial krilla." You've been working a long time on your smirk; you know it looks good. "Wanna chase me all over the States, Captain Ahab? Your white glubbin' whale? Wanna fry me like a fish in hot oil?"

And there it is, there's the spark of hate-lust in her eyes; though her composure's perfect, those eyes betray her. You've known her too long; you know where all the buttons are. Doesn't make them any less fun to push, though. "Your President," she says, cool and exact, "is _fucked_."

You laugh, and you toss your trident away. It clatters on the tiles. (You're pretty good at manifesting too, actually.) "Well, _glub_ , small fry. I thought you were here to fuck _me_."

Then she's on you with a hiss of rage, and you're delighted to discover that her manifested clothing is so good it even _tears_ right. In a twisted sort of way, you're proud.

Two hours later you've had her on every piece of furniture in the Oval Office - including the desk - and even if you end up losing your bet and having to jump ship before the term is out, it was worth it to hear her call you _k̮̬͖ͮ̉͌̚i͚̫͈̭̮͎̰̅ͣs̩͙̝̯̫̑͒̂̀m͉̠̪es͉̖ͅi̳͚̥̟̻͙̜͑̌s͚͒̄̈́_.


End file.
